[majewsky]

I know you're describing pathological examples to make your point, but:

> Would you rather have a train that arrives one minute late every single day, for a 0% on-time record

At this point, the operator should just update the schedule to reflect actual travel speed.

[vkou]

What about a train that idles for an extra 0-15 minutes, in order to make sure that it arrives on time, because there is 15 minutes of headroom baked into the schedule?

The parent poster notes that trains in Atlanta do just that.